Patron of the Arts

that it had always been, and her barely suppressed excitement was stimulating. Mike put his foot on a rock and stood outlined against the sunset. He was also lean and fit, with long shaggy hair and a full beard. He watched the two women run out to the water’s edge, their breasts bouncing and their long hair swaying. “This is Eden, Brian,” Mike said.

“Life is easy, it’s beautiful, it’s quiet. Just the sort of thing everyone wants to escape to. Until they do it.” Mike turned his head to look at me, but I could not see his expression against the sunset. “I have my Eve, but there is no Able, not even a Cain. We don’t know why. Our shots wore off well over a year ago. We felt—we knew—that when we died there would be nothing left, only . . .” He waved his hand around. “Only all this space.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m glad you came.’’

Then he turned and shouted at the two women playing in the dark surf. “Hey, you two! We’re hungry! Let’s make some dinner!”

Madelon and Nova, supple and voluptuous, trotted up the sands and stepped over the rocks, and went past us, up into the cave. They were talking about sunlight on skin. Madelon went to a cup in the rock and fished out a necklace of carved fruit seeds, as Mike built the fire higher. Madelon gave the necklace to Nova, who slipped it over her head and adjusted it between her firm breasts. She looked at me, smiling, and I said it was as beautiful on her as any custom selection from Tiffany’s. Nova embraced Madelon, their breasts pressing together, and they kissed.

Mike grinned up at them as he squatted by the fire and spitted a fish. “Yum,” he said, and held the fish over the fire. Madelon and Nova released each other after a long look, their hands clasped together, then Madelon began slicing some beetlike vegetables, and Nova started shredding a mound of fist-sized leafy plants. I sat on the grass bed and began washing some wide leaves to use as dishes.

The meal was excellent, and our fingers served us well. Afterward, Madelon came around the fire and threw herself on me, bearing me back into the grass bed. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” She kissed me long and hard and her skin was smooth and supple against me. I came up grinning and they laughed at my obvious physical reaction. Nova looked cat-eyed, but smiled anyway, and seemed to mean it.

Some time later Nova came to me and put her arms around my waist as I stood in the cave entrance looking up at the fantasy in the sky. Ragged pale sheets of flaming gas were flung across the sky, netting huge multicolored stars, pale giants that had glowed even in the noonday sun.

“She was your wife, wasn’t she?”

I nodded. “Once long ago,” I said. “I loved her then,” I said in answer to her unspoken question. “But now . . . I love her . . . but I’m not in love with her.”

I took Nova in my arms and the waves splashed thunderously on the rocks. “I love you,” I said into her ear. “You.”

She hugged me tight and kissed me hard. “I love you, too—but I’m scared, Brian. This place is all right for awhile . . . but they are bored, I know it. I would be bored, too, if there were only ice cream.”

I looked up at the night sky and said, “I’ll try.”

Madelon and Mike came out and Mike gestured up at the bright starlight. “Can you figure out where we are? Are we even in Home Galaxy? If we are, is it the Perseus Arm?”

I shrugged. “Homesick?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Madelon. “To be able to go is fine; but to have to stay is annoying. Do you think your Martian way will help?”

“I don’t even know how it works,” I said, “except that I seem to

. . .” There were no words for it. Focus? Merge? Link? Blend? And would that method work so far from where I started? Could the rock fling itself back from the sea?

“I’m in no hurry to leave,” Nova said, “but I would like to know that we could.”

I agreed with her and we broke up to go to our moss and grass beds. We made love in the night, and heard one another’s gasping orgasms and I utterly amazed myself by thinking, I’ m glad Madelon is happy. Hearing their unembarrassed intimacies excited Nova and she was perhaps just a little competitive as we made love.

I fell asleep, with Nova cradled in my arms, more amazed at my own reaction to the lovemaking of my former wife than having crossed the stars in a blink of time. But one was emotional and the other was merely intellectual. Crossing space was possible, one way or another; changing oneself is always the hardest task of all.

In the morning Nova went with Mike to fish, while I sat on a sunny rock with Madelon and cut open fruit for breakfast. Some deep red ones had a center of a sweet tasty juice in which tiny seeds floated. The purple-striped green ones tasted minty, and some very small yellow ones tasted a little like apples.